The Jesus Army: A column for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy

There is a long read on the Jesus Army in today Guardian, and on Sunday the BBC beings showing a two-part documentary series called Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army.

I have been blogging about the Jesus Army several times in the last three years and devoted one of my quarterly Sighcology columns in the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy to it.

Sighcology: The Jesus Army

Somehow Bugbrooke isn’t the sort of place you expect to spawn a dangerous cult. People with well-paid jobs in Northampton, a few miles to the east, search for houses there. It has a pub on its high street and a second just outside the village where you can watch boats go by on the Grand Union Canal. St Michael and All Angels, its church, dates from the early 13th century.

But it was Bugbrooke’s Baptist chapel that in 1969 gave birth to the Jesus Fellowship, later to be popularly known as the Jesus Army. Its leader, a lay pastor called Noel Stanton, soon attracted a younger and larger congregation.

In 1974 the village’s Anglican rectory was purchased to house a Christian commune. By the early 1990s, there were 850 people living in 60 Jesus Army communal households scattered across the Midlands. 

The Army also preached to people in the street, seeking out the addicted and destitute. Some were scooped up and came to live in its communes and work in its commercial activities – the Army operated shops, businesses and two large farms. As Medieval monasteries proved, taking vows of poverty can make you paradoxically prosperous.

Stanton, described in one BBC report as “a firebrand who preached daily about sins of the flesh”, died in 2009. It will come as no surprise to you students of human psychology that allegations he had committed sexual assaults against boys soon began to emerge. 

By 2019, accusations had been made against 43 people who were active in the Jesus Army, and hundreds of former members were seeking damages for alleged abuse. This included rapes, bullying, brainwashing, forced labour, financial bondage and beatings of young boys by groups of men. The BBC was told that children suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse “on a prolific scale”.

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One of the talents of a backwoods Conservative MP used to be the ability to spot bounders and bad hats – I think it was something to do with the number of buttons on the cuffs of their suits. And you have to hand it to Michael Morris, who sat for Northampton South between 1974 and 1997: he was on to Noel Stanton.

Thanks to the extensive online archive of press coverage maintained by Jesus Army Watch, we can see that in 1985 he expressed concern about members of the Army holding posts as teachers, doctors and social workers: 

“I strongly object to people following a particular cult or philosophy holding an influential position in society where there is a danger they can influence people into their faith.”

A year later he called on Northampton Borough Council to ban the Army from its land and buildings.

Another item you can find in this archive is an article William Dalrymple published in the Independent in 1989 after visiting Bugbrooke. He was only 24, but this was also the year Dalrymple published his first book, In Xanadu. Today he is a much-decorated historian with particular expertise in the Indian subcontinent and its religions.

Dalrymple listed many of the charges laid against the Jesus Army, contrasting this catalogue with the happy experiences of the people he met in Bugbrooke. He then quoted a sociologist as saying that the term “brainwashing” is nothing more than a metaphor used to explain strong religious convictions by people who find them inexplicable.

But Dalrymple had already quoted an account by a former member of the Army that shows this explanation won’t do: 

“You have to fit in,” he says. “They take away your ability to make your own choices and you cannot express your own opinions. If you don't obey Noel you're accused of not loving Christ.”

In the end, he clashed personally with Stanton. “He turned everyone against me,” he remembers. “All my old friends cut me dead. One guy came up to me and fell on his knees crying and weeping, saying 'God forgive him.' It scared the hell out of me. Then they began trying to persuade me I was insane – possessed by demons.”

Eventually he fled to Denmark … but the Jesus People traced him there. “They kept ringing me up and telling me I had the heart of Judas Iscariot and was under God's judgement.”

As a partisan of the Midlands, I take a certain grim satisfaction from seeing a writer who has mastered the subtleties of Eastern religions defeated by those of Northamptonshire.

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It’s easy to call someone like Stanton a hypocrite, but we’re all good at keeping contradictory beliefs and actions well apart in our minds. I recall someone else who shared Evangelical Christians’ remarkable affection for corporal punishment, John Smyth. He was Mary Whitehouse’s barrister and a fellow campaigner for purity, who posthumously brought down an Archbishop of Canterbury.

He had attached himself to Winchester, the public school, leading some pupils in religious discussions. One of the housemasters described a friendly conversation with him. “It’s good of you to give up your time like this,” he said to Smyth, “and the boys obviously enjoy their time with you, but I notice you only ever invite the good-looking boys.”

At this, he recalled, Smyth curled up in his chair into an extraordinary foetal position. I suspect he feared the compartments in his mind were about to be ripped down.

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I no longer see the Jesus Army’s bus, in its Scooby Doo colours, passing through the town where I live; nor do I see it parked up in the centre of Leicester as the crowds are evangelised. The Jesus Centre in Northampton, a striking art deco cinema the cult owned, is now a theatre and conference centre.

A news report I saw late last year said the organisation winding up the Army’s affairs had accepted liability for 264 perpetrators of abuse, but 539 people have been named as offenders by former members.

So far £7.7m has been paid in compensation, the money raised by sale of the Army’s properties. And I am left wondering why this extraordinary scandal has not received more media coverage.